Creative chaos and busy minds – a look behind the scenes of the PROMOS PRESS editorial office

The magazine  

The first issue of “IT&I – Informationstechnologie und Immobilien” (Information Technology and Real Estate) was published in March 2000 under the slogan “Hintergründe für Praktiker” (background information for practitioners), and thus took the first step on its ongoing journey to report on the latest developments in information technology, provide details on real estate applications and to link these with the specialist topics of the real estate business in a useful manner. Over the past 15 years, what started with twelve pages back then has become established as a specialist magazine for our readers. A total of 564 pages have been published with 254 contributions in the form of overviews, analyses, case studies, success stories, commentaries, interviews and tutorials. These are practice-oriented and reflect theoretical concepts as well as the current status of development, which is why numerous guest authors from the field have also had their say.  

Since 2014, the specialist magazine has been available as an ePaper – an environmentally friendly online edition, if you will. This allows you to flick through the pages on your screen, search for specific terms, seek out individual pages or articles, enlarge and print texts and save the magazine in PDF format. With this version, which is identical to the printed magazines, our readers benefit from the advantages of digital reading and operating convenience.

The readers  

Our specialist magazine is published every six months in a subscription service, as both a printed and an online edition. But who reads IT&I? The more than 3,000 subscribers include managers, decision-makers and users from the following sectors:

• Housing industry (municipal and private)
• Commercial real estate
• Property management
• Maintenance and construction
• Management of real estate used for personal purposes
• Finally, the readership is rounded out with people who are interested in real estate IT applications.  

The topics  

A look back at 15 years of IT&I reveals all manner of developments in information technology. But which topics do we remember particularly well and which highlights garnered the most attention? The perennial favourite in reporting was and remains the topic of processes. Be it the increased effectiveness that can be realised with information technology, digitisation or the more recent topic of mobility – process optimisations are the most discussed topic in our magazine.

The editorial team  

What actually goes into the making of IT&I magazine? The employees on the editorial team put the magazine together by hand with great care and a love of detail. From the initial idea until it arrives in the hands of the readers, there are many steps before a complete magazine is ready. Work on a new issue starts at a very early stage. At PROMOS PRESS, the work doesn’t stop with publication of IT&I. Shortly after the current issue is published, the staff begin collecting the topics for the next issue and arranging them to form an appealing mix. Following this, expert authors are addressed regarding the topics in question and commissions are awarded if the editorial staff are not planning to research and write the articles themselves. Once the articles have been allocated, the real handwork begins – copywriting. Around one and a half months before publication, things start hotting up. Alongside the editing, page planning for the magazine starts. In what sequence will the articles appear? Which articles are to receive how much space? Which topic will be used as the hook for the editorial and how will the various items be placed? As well as editorial planning, the graphics and layout teams are closely involved in the work at this point. Approximately two weeks before publication, the print data is sent to the printers and, almost simultaneously, the distribution phase starts in which address data is determined and prepared. While the printers are printing the magazine on large print sheets, cutting them to size and binding them in a multi-stage process, the editorial team creates the online edition of the magazine. Only a few days before publication, the printers deliver 4,000 copies to the PROMOS business premises, where they are finally prepared for delivery. An exception is the autumn issue of IT&I, which is published with a print run of 12,000 copies for the EXPO REAL.